On this day (+2) in 1876, one of America’s most celebrated inventors was to learn the promise and punishment of punctuality. His name was Elisha Gray and he had already moved interactive communications light years ahead. He had invented an automatic relay for the telegraph which sped up communications by half. He then invented a trans-printer which read Morse code and printed the words in typeface. Partially inspired by the ease and speed provided by Gray’s inventions, the telegraph business took off.

That led to capacity constraints and demands for a telegraphic super highway. Since there was no fiber optics at the time, they needed something new. Gray decided to try sending simultaneous multiple messages by using a different musical tone for each message. It was ingenious….but still had a few bugs. And, while Gray worked on them, word spread that his new system had a special quality…..it could transmit the human voice. But Gray thought the ability to send eight telegraphic messages over the same wire simultaneously was more important.

While he plugged away at that, his partners warned that others (including Edison) were said to be working on voice transmission. So just to tie up loose ends, Gray dropped by the patent office to drop off his letter of intent on the telephone. Unfortunately, a guy named Alexander Graham Bell had dropped by just two hours earlier. That coincidence of time would result in patent lawsuits over the next three decades. In an odd twist, the lawsuits became so expensive that Bell and his father-in-law offered Western Union the rights to the telephone for just $100,000. In a decision studied in today’s business schools, Western Union replied…..We’re in the telegraph business not the phone business….and that’s where they stayed….If they had only realized they were in the communications business!!!! They might have ruled the world.

On this day in 1899, neighbors watched a messenger deliver a note to an Austrian Engineer named David Schwartz. The note contained good news. The German Government was interested in producing Schwartz’s design of a lighter than air ship. (Actually he had borrowed the design of a Frenchman named Giffard some 47 years earlier and added the newly perfected combustion engine.)

Anyway, the neighbors saw the messenger leave and the door close. They heard Schwartz screaming the equivalent in Austrian of – – “I’m Rich!! I’m Rich!!” Then the screaming got louder and with it the sound of a man dancing about in a joyous frenzy. Then it got quiet. The next sound they heard was Frau Schwartz screaming “He’s Dead!! He’s Dead!! (Schwartz got so excited about his good fortune he threw a seven.)

A few month’s later a very kindly guy bought Schwartz’s patents and designs from the widow — for a rather nominal fee. What a prince! Or so you might think but he was not. He was just a Count – – Count Ferdinand Von Zepplin and there are rumors he did okay with the invention. It may be just as well. How could you watch a football game knowing some of the shots were coming from “the Goodyear Schwartz?”

A new online platform on renewable energy innovation

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in co-operation with the EPO and the International Electrotechnical Commission have launched a new online platform giving access to the world’s largest collection of global renewable energy standards and patent documents. Also known as INSPIRE, the International Standards and Patents in Renewable Energy platform is the first and most complete solution of its kind. Indeed, the patents section contains information on over two million patent documents relating to carbon mitigation technologies from PATSTAT – a patent statistics database and Espacenet – a public online patent search tool. The standards section enables users to search through a database of more than 400 internationally used standards and explains what standards are, how they can be used and why they are important.

CanadaCanada remains on the Watch List in 2015, as a number of IPR and related issues remain. Regarding Canada’s implementation of its 2012 Copyright Modernization Act, provisions aimed at addressing copyright piracy over the Internet came into force in January 2015, and Canada completed its ratification of the WIPO Internet Treaties in August 2014. The United States continues to urge Canada to fully implement its WIPO Internet Treaties commitments and to continue to address the challenges of copyright piracy in the digital age. Regarding border enforcement issues, the Combating Counterfeit Products Act became law in December 2014. The new law provides authority to Canadian customs officials to detain pirated and counterfeit goods being imported and exported at the border. The United States is disappointed that the new law does not apply to pirated and counterfeit goods in customs transit control or customs transshipment control in Canada. The United States urges Canada to provide its customs officials with full ex officio authority to improve its ability to address the serious problem of pirated and counterfeit goods entering our highly integrated supply chains. With respect to pharmaceuticals, the United States continues to have serious concerns about the availability of rights of appeal in Canada’s administrative process for reviewing regulatory approval of pharmaceutical products. The United States also continues to have serious concerns about the lack of clarity and the impact of the heightened utility requirements for patents that Canadian courts have applied recently. In these cases, courts have invalidated several valuable patents held by U.S. pharmaceutical companies on utility grounds, by interpreting the “promise” of the patent and finding that insufficient information was provided in the application to substantiate that promise. These recent decisions, which have affected products that have been in the market and benefiting patients for years, have led to uncertainty for patent holders and applicants, including with respect to how to effectively meet this standard. This unpredictability also undermines incentives for investments in the pharmaceutical sector. The United States closely monitors developments on these issues and looks forward to continuing to work with Canada to address these and other IPR issues, including through the TPP negotiations.